Roots of Outrage

He badly wanted to believe her. ‘Tell me the truth, Patti.’

‘Darling?’ She looked at him with big innocent eyes. ‘I also want us to keep a low profile so that we don’t have trouble. Just examine the facts. Have I made trouble since we started going together? Have I climbed or any whites-only buses? Walked into any white restaurants? Tried to cash a cheque in any whites-only queue at the bank – or buy a-whites-only postage stamp? Tried to swim in a whites-only pool? Have I?’

‘No,’ Mahoney sighed.

‘And that used to be my stock-in-trade. Now Patti Gandhi has disappeared from the magistrates’ courts. Why? Because I want to be happy with you. I don’t want to get into trouble and spoil it. So, I suppose I’ve become like ninety per cent of the white South Africans. Like ninety per cent of Germany under Hitler: don’t make trouble with the big bad authorities.’ She looked at him with big dark eyes. ‘Which is pretty despicable, I suppose, but that’s where yours truly is at.’ Then she flashed her brilliant smile. ‘And we’re not allowed to talk about politics, remember? So …’ She heaved herself up out of the bath, gleaming, and reached for a towel. ‘So, shall we just have fun while it lasts?’

‘Don’t talk like that.’

While it lasts. Oh God, those words frightened him. But somehow he did not believe them, that these glorious days could not last, somehow they would get away with it. This apartheid craziness could not go on forever. Lying alone in his bed in The Parsonage, staring at the ceiling in the darkness, he knew that these laws would not change for a long, long time and then only because of the bloodbath, and he knew she was right when she said they were doomed, living in an unreal world. But out here on Buck’s Farm, drinking wine by the pool in the sun, lying together in the slippery caress of the bath, making love on the big double bed, it felt like the real world, how people were meant to feel and live, and he could not believe it was not going to last.

Unhappiness came in the second year of their relationship. In May he was going to Write his law examinations: when he had that degree what the fuck was he going to do with it? What were they going to do?

‘You’ll write the local bar exam, and practise,’ she said.

‘I don’t want to practise law.’

‘Nonsense, you’ll be an excellent lawyer. You can’t keep on working for Drum. It’s been a great job but it’s a dead-end.’

‘I could work for the Star. Or the Rand Daily Mail.’

‘Luke, you’re destined for greater things than newspaper work.’

‘What’s wrong with being a political columnist? An opinion-maker.’

‘Luke,’ she said. ‘With your brain and gift of the gab you should be in the courtroom fighting for justice, raising hell. Helping people who’re politically persecuted, not being an armchair political commentator. We need people like you.’

‘Patti, law isn’t a very portable qualification – it’s not like medicine or dentistry, which is the same the world over – a lawyer cannot easily uproot himself and go to practise in another country. He’s got to write their local bar examinations. And one day South Africa is going to blow up. I don’t want to start exams all over again in Australia or Canada.’

‘That’s exactly the point! Yes, this country is going to blow up. But that’s when you must stay and help rebuild it after the dust settles, not run away to Australia or Canada!’

He sighed. ‘Patti, when the dust settles there’s going to be very little law. The policeman and the judge are the cornerstones of society, and they’re going to be black.’

She said quietly: ‘You don’t believe that us blacks are capable of running this country, do you?’

‘You’re not black, for Christ’s sake.’

‘The point is you don’t believe that we in the ANC can run a decent government, do you? You think it will be corrupt, inefficient and under-qualified.’

Mahoney sighed. True. ‘Not true. I just think it will take a hell of a long time to rebuild on those ruins. And during that time I will be unable to earn a reliable living as a lawyer. So if I’m going to be a lawyer I must leave South Africa, as my father said. But if I’m going to be a journalist, a political commentator, South Africa is the best place to be. Because there’s more to write about here than anywhere else.’

She looked at him narrowly with those beautiful brown eyes.

‘The truth of the matter is that you’re a racist, darling.’

No. A realist. The truth of that matter lay in those mortuaries, in the cloven heads, the stab and hack wounds down to the bone, the severed limbs, genitals cut off for muti; the stick fights, two, three, four hundred armed a side, all breaking loose. The truth of the matter was in the chaos of the Congo, the turmoil in Uganda, the horrors of the Mau Mau, the corruption of Ghana. The truth of the matter was Luke Mahoney liked blacks and wanted to help them: he simply did not believe they were ready yet to run the country.

‘No. The solution is a policy of gradualism,’ he said. ‘Equal rights for all civilized men. Meanwhile let the others have a degree of local self-government in their areas, so they gradually learn the responsibilities of democracy.’

‘The “civilized” ones. “Them.” You really don’t consider them to be ordinary people, do you? They’re a different species. God, that’s typical of the white man – even the liberal white man: the blacks are “them” out there picking their noses, they’re not like “us” though of course there are a few civilized ones and of course we mustn’t be beastly to “them”.’

‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

‘But they are different.’

‘Of course they’re different, Patti. Different cultures, different institutions, different ideas on how to live and behave.’

‘And therefore unfit to govern themselves and have the vote?’

‘The vote, democracy, is a sophisticated Western institution. It’s alien to them, not one of their institutions. If they’re going to adopt it – or have it thrust upon them – they’ve got to learn how to use it.’

‘Become “civilized”? By your standards.’

‘By normal standards.’

‘By normal standards you’d have to exclude a lot of the dumb whites in this country.’

‘Agreed.’

‘And a hell of a lot of the peasants in Europe. So are you seriously telling me that if we were Italians, having this discussion in Rome now, you’d be recommending that we disenfranchise the peasants in the hills?’

He sighed. ‘No, because there are plenty of educated Italians to run the country properly. But there are not enough educated blacks to run South Africa by Western standards – and it’s Western institutions they want to take over.’

‘But there are enough educated blacks to run it their way.’

‘The African way? Sure. Shaka did it single-handed.’

‘Bullshit. You wouldn’t disenfranchise the Italian peasants because they’re white, but if they were black you’d only let the elite govern Italy. Or have a benevolent dictatorship, like Franco does in Spain.’

‘As a matter of fact a benevolent dictatorship may be good for Africa. “Nobody has the vote for the next thirty years until we’re all civilized sufficiently to use it properly” – maybe that’s the answer. The blacks respond well under their chiefs and behave themselves. But to answer your question: no, I would not recommend disenfranchising the Italian peasants because they do not settle their political differences with an axe. They do not chop the opposition’s head open to make a point.’

‘And the blacks will?’

‘For God’s sake, Patti, they do.’

‘So there’s no hope?’

‘The hope is civilization. Gradualism.’

‘And what are these normal standards of civilization?’

‘Various alternatives. A reasonable level of education is obviously one. Income is another alternative. Or property – a man who owns his own house is smart enough to have the vote. Age is another one: when a man reaches say, forty –’

‘Forty, huh? You’re twenty, you have the vote and you’re judging the maturity of a man of forty. What white arrogance –’

He groaned. ‘You’re looking for a fight, aren’t you?’

‘Me? Never.’